Desiderius Erasmus was born in 1466 in Holland, where attended school at the Brothers of the Common Life. Over the span of 1466-1536 Desiderius Erasmus became the most influential Christian humanists of his time. He had a profound preoccupation with religion. Erasmus was most popular for developing and popularizing the reform plan for Christian humanism. The reform of the church was very important to him. He wanted to reform the church from within, while not destroying the unity of the medieval Christian church. He needed to spread the philosophy of Jesus so that people will have a full understanding of it. His plan was to provide people with a conceptual understanding of the sources of early Christianity. He also wanted to make the people aware of the abuses that very common in the church and educate them on their instances. Once of the most noted instances of these practices in action is his literary work, The Praise of Folly. In this work he successfully communicates critical analysis of the most corrupt practices of the Christian society. This included verbal attacks within the ranks and among the clergy. In the article he says, " they (the religious) think that they are superior to all other people. , amid all their pretense of apostolic charity, the members of one order will denounce the members of another order clamorously because of the way in which the habit has been belted-.
During his life he traveled all of Europe verbalizing his beliefs in Latin. His stops included France, England, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Erasmus described his humanist beliefs as "the philosophy of Christ." He felt that Christianity should be a guided philosophy. It should represent the direction of daily life. He was opposed to the system of dogmatic beliefs and practices of the medieval church. He turned his focus to inner piety rather than the external forms of religion. He felt that people needed to have a deeper understanding of the early church.